Updated 12:11 a.m., Thursday, May 31, 2012

OKLAHOMA CITY — It was the equivalent of fighting Manny Pacquiao with an arm tied behind one’s back: Having somehow lost his left shoe, Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard found himself isolated on the left wing trying to guard Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant early in Tuesday’s Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.

Durant made one of his 10 field goals, beating the shoeless rookie to the basket for a layup, but it was one of the few moments in the game when Leonard looked relatively helpless against the three-time NBA scoring champion.

Still a little more than a month shy of his 21st birthday, Leonard recorded the first playoff double-double of his career in Game 2, scoring 18 points and snatching 10 rebounds. He also logged a playoff-high 35 minutes, matched up against Durant nearly every second he was on the floor.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has learned to entrust such an important assignment on a player whose rapid development made trading veteran Richard Jefferson a no-brainer for management.

“Kawhi Leonard is a really quick learner,” Popovich said Tuesday after the Spurs gained a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series. “He’s got a work ethic that’s really impressive, and he has no fear. He’s enjoying guarding the guys he’s had to guard all year long.

“I’ve learned as the year went along to believe in him more and more. Now I just wish he knew our plays.”

Leonard already has learned one of Popovich’s favorite axioms. Asked how he could seem so cool while facing a player as skilled as Durant, he gave a simple answer.

“It’s really just a basketball game,” he said, “a game I’ve been playing my whole life. I just try to go out there and play my hardest and help the team win.”

Leonard acknowledges occasionally feeling the need to pinch himself to see if what he’s experiencing is real. The magnitude of playing such a big role on such a big stage is not wasted on the quiet rookie.

“Yeah, every day it does (strike me),” he said. “I’m just living in the moment, and I’ve got a great group of guys behind me and coaches who are helping me move forward and get better.”

Fishing for answers: Derek Fisher had some fun with reporters when they asked him about the daunting task of beating the Spurs and snapping their 20-game win streak.

“I don’t know if there is anything we can do,” the Thunder guard said, chuckling. “I guess we should just not show up.”

But Fisher, who was part of five championship teams with the Los Angeles Lakers before coming to the Thunder, had a simple idea of what the Thunder need to do to win Game 3.

“One of the things we talked about was you can talk about X’s and O’s and adjustments and rotations and all of those things. But at the end of the day, sometimes you just have to want it,” he said. “And how you define that, how you lay that out as a game plan, I don’t know.”

Tough task: Scott Brooks did not show his team any film of Tuesday’s loss before its workout Wednesday, but it’s not as if the Thunder coach has a clear answer for how to beat the Spurs.

“We took away a lot of their paint points from the previous night, but they made 11 threes,” he said of Game 2. “To beat them, you have to do both. So we’ll figure out a way to do that.”

Attitude adjustment: After struggling for most of Game 1, Thunder guard James Harden blamed self-inflicted pressure and was determined to relax in Game 2. The attitude change worked: Harden went for 30 points on 10-of-13 shooting.

“I just wanted to come out here and just play hard,” Harden said. “I wasn’t really worried about making shots.”